Steinbeck wrote with pencil on the ubiquitous American yellow pad. Computers and word-processing came too late for him, and so I was curious about his wife’s assumption that while he would have liked and mastered them, he’d probably have stuck with pencil-on-paper for actual writing. 

‘I’m sure that if he were writing today he would love computers and word-processors. He would learn to use them too.  Then he would sit down and write his books in pencil on a yellow pad.’

See also Elaine’s discovery in the writing room he had in their town house; his choosing between two parts of the same property; his comment on writing, shortly after they married; and where it all began. 

Source: Elaine Steinbeck, Foreword, The Grapes of Wrath (London: Mandarin Paperback, 1995), p. ii

Photo credit: Steve Johnson at pexels